Togo’s elections: opposition vows to reorganize after ruling party’s sweeping victory

Togo’s opposition has vowed to “reinvent” itself after winning just five seats in the country’s legislative elections held on 29 April, while the ruling Union for the Republic party (UNIR) has clinched a sweeping victory.

Opposition parties had hoped for a strong showing in last week’s ballot, which they dismissed as an “electoral masquerade”, after trying to mobilize supporters to reverse a constitutional reform they condemned as an “institutional coup.” They alleged that the amended constitution would pave way for the incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe to extend his already nearly two-decade rule.

In the end, Gnassingbe’s ruling UNIR party won 108 of the 113 seats in the West African state’s parliament, according to provisional results published by the electoral commission on Saturday (4 May).

The vote, which took place amid heightened political tensions and a series of crackdowns on opposition protests, has thus provided a power boost for Gnassingbe. While the old constitution would have allowed the 57-year-old president to run for re-election just one more time, after the reform, Gnassingbe, as the head of the majority party in parliament, is expected to automatically assume the newly created post of “president of the council of ministers”. This new post, opposition parties warn, will allow him to avoid these terms limits and extend his family’s decades-long grip on power.

Responding to its resounding defeat, one of the opposition leaders asserted that “these results are a real lesson for the opposition, we need to reinvent ourselves.”